Problems with Linksys EtherFast 10/100 PCI and 0.89K

[Rob Ross]

Ok, I tried the LC82C169 board for real this time <smile>.  It's getting a
single "transmitter stopped!" message, but seems more reliable in terms of
detecting the transceiver and thus working. 

Notes:

1) tulip.c reports BOTH the LC82C169 and the LC82C168 as an LC82C168.

>From system logs (for the LC82C169-based board):

Aug 14 18:25:09 playtoy kernel: tulip.c:v0.89K 8/8/98
	becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
Aug 14 18:25:09 playtoy kernel: eth0: Lite-On 82c168 PNIC at 0x6c00,
	00 a0 cc 21 d9 fe, IRQ 10.
Aug 14 18:25:09 playtoy kernel: eth0: Checking for MII transceivers...
Aug 14 18:25:09 playtoy kernel: eth0:  MII transceiver found at MDIO
	address 1, config 3100 status 7829.
Aug 14 18:25:13 playtoy kernel: eth0: The transmitter stopped!  CSR5 is
	2678016, CSR6 812e2002.
Aug 14 18:25:13 playtoy kernel: eth0: Changing PNIC configuration to
	half-duplex, CSR6 812e0000.

2) The only apparent difference between the two cards as seen in /proc/pci
is a difference in revision number (my LC82C168-based board is revision
17 as reported by /proc/pci).

>From /proc/pci (for the LC82C169-based board):

PCI devices found:
  Bus  0, device  12, function  0:
    Ethernet controller: Unknown vendor LNE100TX (rev 32).
      Medium devsel.  Fast back-to-back capable.  IRQ 10.  Master
Capable.  Latency=64.
      I/O at 0x6c00.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xea800000.

3) tulip-diag still seems to have trouble WRT seeing the MII transceiver.

>From tulip-diag -fam -p 0x6c00 (again, for LC82C169-based board):

tulip-diag.c:v1.04 8/10/98 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Unknown Tulip chip registers at 0x6c00:
  00004800 01ff0000 42422600 00fff028 00fff228 02660010 812e2002 0001ebef
  00000000 00000000 00fff2d8 00fff2d8 00000024 00000000 00000000 10000001
 The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
 The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
Transmit started, Receive started, half-duplex.
 The transmit unit is set to store-and-forward.
 Port selection is MII 100baseTx scrambler, half-duplex.
 An old-style EEPROM layout was found.

 The old-style layout does not contain transceiver control information.

 This board may not work, or may work only with a subset of transceiver

 options or data rates.
 ***WARNING***: No MII transceivers found!

Anyway, I hope this is all of some use!

Rob Ross
Parallel Architecture Research Laboratory, Clemson University
mailto:rbross@parl.eng.clemson.edu
http://ece.clemson.edu/parl/rbross/